Despite my better judgement, I pulled my XP Home Edition CD out of the closet and decided to reformat my Shuttle XPC SN25P. We have another Windows computer for games but it has been running an OEM version of Windows 98 that came with the machine. It seemed like it might be a good idea to get onboard with XP for our gaming PC.
As I write this, my Ubuntu installation has just finished and I have also downloaded a few drivers to my USB thumb drive for my XP install. It was incredibly easy to get started with Ubuntu, but my XP experience has been exactly the opposite.
While Ubuntu was able to immediately connect to my network and recognize all of my hardware, XP has been stuck. It doesn’t know what kind of video is installed nor can it get online with the onboard network adapter.
Probably the most frustrating part is that XP has already reminded me a few times that there are only 30 days remaining to activate the hardware. Hopefully after a reboot the drivers can be loaded and XP will be able to connect to the network and let me finish installing and configuring the hardware.
Meanwhile, Ubuntu is already up and running even before installing it to my hard drive. Maybe Microsoft could learn something from the flexibility this kind of smart installation has for the user.
